Do you remember the day we met, Robert? I was just a grad student, working part time in a microbiology lab, and you kidnapped me and took me to your evil lair to create a plague to unleash upon humanity. You were twenty-eight, and bent on vengeance, and I was just twenty-three and I only cared about finishing my dissertation. You knocked me out with chloroform, and tied me up and held me prisoner. When you ripped the blindfold off of me, I remember thinking how cute it was the way you swore you'd make humanity pay for its sins against you.

Remember that, Robert? Your 'evil lair' was just an empty factory downtown, and you lived in a ratty studio apartment in a part of town filled with hookers. You told me you'd kill me as soon as you were done with me, but we fell in love that night. Remember how we spent that whole night making love, in the middle of the forest of Erlenmeyer flasks bubbling with multicolored fluids? We fell asleep afterwards, with your trenchcoat as a blanket, and when I woke up, you told me that you wanted me to be yours forever.

We were so innocent then. Your dearest ambition was nothing more than to force the U.N. to give you a billion dollars, and then retire to an island in the South Pacific. Later you told me it was me who inspired you to higher ambitions. You said that a billion dollars and a private island weren't enough for me, that I deserved to have every wonderful thing the world held.

Remember how you proposed to me? You flew me off to that spot in the Himalayas where you were just beginning to build your Fortress of Doom. We were penniless; you couldn't even afford a ring for me. So you told me that one day, when all the nations of the world bowed down to us, I would have every beautiful and precious jewel in the world. You told me that legions of slaves would travel from every corner of the world to bring me rubies and emeralds and marble sculptures. You were always such a romantic, Robert. I told you that just being with you was enough. So long as we were together, I was the richest woman in the world. I remember how you kissed me on that mountaintop; I remember how you held me as we looked over the infinite, as the snow swirled around us. I felt like we were spinning, as if an orchestra had begun to swell when you held me close.

I never told you this, Robert, but it was you who made me want to become a ninja. The years I spent studying with monks in the furthest corners of China and Japan? I told you I just wanted to improve myself, but the whole time I really wanted to impress you. I needed to prove that I was deadly, too, so I learned to fire guns and throw grenades and kill men with nothing more than a touch. The skin tight black suit and knee-high stiletto boots were only to make you happy.

Remember that time I tortured that British spy to death? Remember how I made him cut off his hand and eat it, and how he gave us the information we needed to foil MI6? Every minute of it, I was thinking about you. I wanted you to be proud of me, Robert. I wanted you to see that I was vicious and evil, too.

Our wedding was the most beautiful day of my life. I remember us, in that chamber five miles underground. You had abducted a priest, and a henchman held a gun to his head while he made it official. Remember how you kidnapped my parents, so they could see it? I'm sure that if he hadn't been bound and gagged, my father would have told you how much he liked you, and how happy he was to see his little girl married. I know my mother was crying from the terror, but I think part of it was tears at seeing the day every mother looks forward to.

All the years we spent together, Robert. Remember the days that you would emerge from your lab, creating flying venomous monkeys or deadly viruses? And I'd cook you dinner, and rub your back, and help you write manifestos or formulate your demands to the president of the United States. We had all the best things in the world by then - remember how you stole the Mona Lisa to put in my bathroom? Remember the hundred-year-old Châteaux d'Yquem that I brought for our first anniversary? I had to kill five men to get that, but it was worth it.

But I loved you before you were an evil supervillain, Robert. I loved you back when you didn't have a dime to your name, and we were just a couple of kids with crazy dreams, dreams of an army of mutants and giant nuclear robots. You could have any woman in the world now, Robert, but I loved you when you didn't have a single hydrogen bomb or giant laser mounted on an asteroid.

So I didn't understand why you grew distant with me. I felt abandoned. I didn't see you for months sometimes, Robert. I had no one to eat dinner with, no one to play footsie with while watching silly movies. No one to share it with when I abducted the wife of the Prime Minister of England and held her for ransom. That's why I left you, Robert. I felt so alone. The endless corridors of your Fortress of Doom seemed empty when I wasn't walking them with you. Without our laughter, all I could hear was the endless echoes of my footsteps on the obsidian floors. You were so wrapped up in your work. Remember what I said to you when I left you, Robert? "Sometimes I think you love that doomsday machine more than you love me."

So when you married that red-headed woman, the one with the cybernetic brain and the metal implants in her body, I was devastated. I realized that you hadn't ignored me for your work - you got absorbed in your work to get away from me. And I was angry, Robert. Remember the hundreds of black-clad men who dropped from helicopters at your wedding? Remember how I hurled a grenade at you? I missed on purpose, Robert. I had sworn to kill you and that red-headed woman, but I couldn't do it in the end. I couldn't even bear to hurt her, because it would make you unhappy.

All those years we fought each other, Robert. You from your Fortress of Doom, me from my secret volcano lair. I think we both knew that every missile we launched at each other, every bullet we fired, every outer space attack we commanded, was really a symbol of our love. I know it didn't work out with you and that red-headed woman. I heard about it - how she never really loved you, and planned to kill you in the end. How you melted her body down and tossed it in the ocean.

Oh, Robert, I've missed you. Conquering Lithuania left me feeling empty, and it's because I had no one to share it with. We were meant to be together, Robert. Let's conquer humanity together. You and me, hand in hand, we'll remake the world in our own image. Let's make the rivers run red with blood, Robert. Together.






The Von Wicked Chronicles
by Excalibre and Evil Catullus

I remember when it was me who made you want to take over the world and enslave humanity
Latex. High heels. Knives. (Excalibre's writeup)
It's not my fault that I'm so evil
I was a teenage Overlord
Lady Deathblast's Lover
This little light of mine
The Thanksgiving battle
My funny villaintine
Robots and comic books
This wicked life
The education of little overlords
All things truly wicked
Darkness lights its own way
No rest
How it all began
Sometimes I think you love that doomsday machine more than you love me.
They are mine. They are dead.
There is a crack in everything
Hell hath no fury like a villainess scorned

This letter was found in its entirety in a bunker fifty-one meters below the rubble of Chateau Trebuchet, alleged summer home of the infamous Contessa Von Wicked. It is the only known document to have survived the fire

My beloved Julia,

Allow me to begin by admitting a strange and savage joy upon discovering that my team of highly skilled assassins failed utterly in their task and that your cold, black heart still beats within your exquisite bosom. You will, of course, be relieved to know that your messenger was granted a swift and painless death. Although I despise sentiment in all its forms as the hypocrisy of the weak-minded, you, my Angel of Destruction, have always been my Achilles' Heel. You are my wound, the only one I have ever acknowledged as my equal, my dearest rival. And inevitably, you betrayed me, for in your heart of hearts you understand as well as I that our vast superiority marks us for a lonely destiny. There can be only one who rules in the natural order of things; power cannot ever be truly shared. And it is because of my fierce and consuming love for you and because of my acknowledgment that you bow to no master that I must regretfully re-iterate that there can be no mercy for you.

And yet, the giant robots, the plasma cannons, the secret undersea laboratory, none of that ever really mattered to me. There was a time when I could have been content with merely the utter destruction of my enemies and their lives' work as long as you were by my side, my valkyrie. But along the way, this all changed. Do you remember the night we crushed The Council of Heroes for Justice? We made love in the rubble of their mountain stronghold. Your face glowed in the light of the flames, with the light of our triumph. It was that very night that our love resulted in a magnificence that transcends you or me; the night our son was conceived. You would be so proud of our son, Julia! His genius outshines mine, and his penchant for cruelty has displayed a flair more creative and elegant than even yours. He is always learning, plotting, scheming. Just before his eleventh birthday he orchestrated a bloody coup d'etat that placed his puppet Junta in control of a small South American country. It is in moments like these that I wish that I had not poisoned my father. How he would have beamed with pride at his grandson's talent for the family business. My Queen of Ruin, our son is so much greater than the sum of our parts. He shall supplant whichever of us survives our precious little war and shall stand stride the globe like a colossus! He shall cleanse the earth with fire and with blood! His name shall be whispered with terror for a hundred-thousand years! Don't you see that all the time I spent in the lab developing death rays and energy gauntlets, all the time I spent in the field training my Elite Commando Corps and my Android Asssassin Squad was time spent to make our son smarter, better, fitter to take his rightful place as absolute monarch of the universe? But perhaps you too foresaw our son's terrible destiny and realized that there could be no mortal feebleness of mercy or sentimental attachment in one who would take his place as a god among men. Perhaps that is really why you abandoned me, abandoned our son.

How painful is the memory of the day you left. When we fought each other in warmechs above the fiery caldera of Mt. Brimstone, you took more than my left eye and my power crystal, you took my heart. How could you have ever believed that I was capable of loving Lady Deathblast? How could I ever have anything but utter contempt for my inferiors? She was never a replacement for you. Don't you understand that when you declared war on me that I lost the will to live? The petty intrigues, murders and destruction of national economies no longer interested me. The wedding was a ruse to goad you into action. Why else would I hold it in the gardens of our summer home, the Palace of Despair, knowing you knew every pitfall, poison gas trap and every flagstone that triggered a giant boulder to crush uninvited guests and solicitors? My darling, I am no fool, I knew well that the man-eating siberian tigers that prowled the grounds recognized you as their mistress. I remember that you planted the belladonna, hemlock and white oleander that even now grace the gardens. I expected nothing but ruthlessness from you. I knew I could die happy if my agonizing screams could serve as a lesson to our son that there can be no quarter between enemies, that war can only truly end in the total annihilation of one party. And you delivered vengeance in exquisite, elegant style, you were a vision of righteous rage, the embodiment of slaughter! But when it came time to deliver the coup de grace, you missed. It was in that moment that I realized that I was your greatest weakness as you were mine. It is with no small amount of regret that I say you should have killed me when you had the chance.

Such passion we have for each other! It is enough to consume us both in a terrible conflagration. But I cannot allow our weakness to consume our son. Our petty desires are a failing of superior beings and an obstacle to our grander destinies. Were it simply a matter of you or me, we could end all this strife and retire to a small palace in the alps with a couple of devoted eunuch slaves. But there is more at stake than the two of us. Even now, I am in the final stages of a campaign that will lead to your eventual destruction. But fear not, darkest shadow of my heart, none of my henchmen will dare sully your terrible beauty by attempting to harm you. I have claimed you for my own. I shall be the one to send you to your damnation (should such a state exist). And I want you to know that when my bare hands encircle your lovely neck and I throttle the last breath from your body, that it is, finally, an act of love.

Your eternal enemy,

Herr Doktor Von Wicked, PhD, PsyD, MD, JD, DDS
(your Robert)

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